


Lips as Red as Blood

by amycarey



Series: Going Back to Hogwarts [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2262780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amycarey/pseuds/amycarey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“So,” Henry says, stopping at her desk and dropping off an essay on transformation properties – three days early. He is so not his mother’s son. “You and Ma are back together.” Regina nods, waiting until the last student has left the classroom before allowing her mouth to form a grin, illuminating her smile golden and her cheeks an unwilling shade of scarlet. Henry, observing her, says, “Ew.”</i><br/>Professors Mills and Swan are happy and Regina is getting to know and care for Henry. How could this possibly go wrong?</p><p>A sequel to 'Spinning Matchsticks into Needles' and 'Mirror, Mirror on the Wall'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lips as Red as Blood

“So,” Henry says, stopping at her desk and dropping off an essay on transformation properties – three days early. He is so not his mother’s son. “You and Ma are back together.” Regina nods, waiting until the last student has left the classroom before allowing her mouth to form a grin, illuminating her smile golden and her cheeks an unwilling shade of scarlet. Henry, observing her, says, “Ew.”

 

“Mr Swan,” she says, admonishing. She is glad they are back on friendly terms though. When she had left Emma, Henry had stopped speaking to her beyond what was required for lessons and she found that she had missed him almost as much as she had missed his mother.

 

“We should hang out,” he says.

 

She stares at him. She has never been that teacher, the one students want to spend time with outside the classroom walls. Emma is without even trying. She has a gang of Gryffindor sixth years who meet for afternoon tea every Saturday, talking about becoming Aurors and eating cream puffs and sandwiches stolen from the kitchens. Regina’s Hufflepuff third years talk incessantly about Professor Swan in hushed tones, calling her the Saviour – a nickname Emma loathes – and sneaking her chocolate after their first ever trip to Hogsmeade. She had to ban the name one lesson, something that made Emma fall out of bed with laughing so hard.

 

“I mean, unless you don’t want to,” Henry says, shoulders hunching and swinging one foot so it hits her desk with a dull _thunk_.

 

“No,” she says quickly, too quickly perhaps, and she feels her cheeks flushing again. There is something about the Swan duo that breaks down her defences, eats away at the mask she wears. “I’d like that.”

 

Henry’s smile brightens the room like a _Lumos_ charm. “Great! I’ll come by on Saturday afternoon when Ma has her study group.”

 

“Is that what they’re calling it?” Regina asks and Henry shrugs, smirking.

 

“I don’t have the heart to tell Ma that they’re not trying to learn. She’s so _proud_ of them,” he says, his pointed face serious and Regina smiles.

 

*

 

“I have a date on Saturday,” Regina says, resting her head against Emma. She has a couch in her suite and Regina, who has never been one for sharing, finds that there may be something to be said for them after all. She likes reclining against Emma, letting her head rest against her chest, feeling the beat of her heart throb through from Emma’s body to her own, the steady rhythm telling her that Emma’s still alive, that everything will be all right. Tonight, she’s draped over Emma; the flannel of Emma’s pyjamas, donned the moment they arrived in her quarters, comforts Regina’s cheek.

 

“Oh?” Emma asks, raising her eyebrows when Regina tilts her head to meet her eyes.

 

“Henry wants to ‘hang out’,” she says. “It’s when your fan club meets so I figured I wasn’t cutting into the time you have with him.”

 

“He asked me about that,” Emma says. She stretches out a hand, stroking a strand of dark hair back from Regina’s face. “Are you okay with it? I know we’ve all spent time together but it’s never been just you and him.”

 

“I do have many years’ experience with young people,” Regina drawls.

 

“Yes, teaching them,” Emma says. “You forget, Professor, I’ve been in your class. You’re not exactly personable.”

 

“And you don’t always have the most control, dear,” Regina snips. For a moment, tension freezes the space between them.

 

“Let’s not fight,” Emma says, sighing. “I’m sure there are better things we could be doing.” Her hand snakes around Regina’s body, fingers stroking her spine, skirting down, and Regina shudders, heat pooling between her thighs. She sits up and Emma whines at the loss of heat.

 

“Come along, dear,” she says, holding out her hand. Her voice has deepened, husky. “Prove me wrong about your control and I’ll show you just how personable I can be.”

 

Emma grins and, clasping Regina’s hand in hers, eagerly follows Regina to the bedroom.

 

*

 

Henry turns up at Regina’s quarters on Saturday, promptly at two. “Hi, Professor Mills,” he says.

 

“Henry, dear,” she says. “Come in.” He enters, looking curiously around her quarters, the bare stone walls, small table over by the window covered in scrolls of paper, bookshelves lining one wall… There’s a fire in the grate, the weather cold and a castle in Scotland no place for people to live in winter, and she’s warming milk on the fire. “Would you like a cocoa?”

 

“Yes, please,” he says, drawn to the bookshelves. She watches him scan his fingers along the spines of the books, entirely wrapped up in the dusty tomes.  

 

“You can borrow anything,” Regina says, pouring cocoa into mugs. “There’s some good novels in amongst the Transfiguration texts.”

 

“Thanks,” he says but he moves away from the shelves anyway. She hands him a mug of cocoa.

 

“Marshmallows?” Henry takes three, eating one and then dunking the last two in his cocoa, before sitting near the fire. Regina sits herself, crossing her legs and taking a sip of her own drink. They observe each other silently for a time.

 

“This is really awkward,” Henry says.

 

“Perhaps,” Regina suggests, “we don’t need to try so hard.” She’s never been good at talking to people. Even when she was a teenager, she had been terrible at it, partly stemming from her mother’s tight grip on her mind and partly down to her own natural reserve. Daniel had been one of the few people who hadn’t given up on her when she had rejected him over and over again and when he died – when she had killed him – the walls had grown higher, the mask had seared into her flesh, her mother’s tight grip around her heart had squeezed so hard she had cried out in pain some nights.

 

“Okay,” Henry says. “Hey, do you play Quidditch?”

 

Regina starts. “I used to,” she says. “At school I was a chaser.”

 

“I really suck at flying,” Henry says. “I want to be good. Can you teach me?”

 

“Surely your mother could,” Regina says. Emma Swan seems the type to be good on a broomstick; she’s fearless.

 

“Ma doesn’t fly,” Henry says. “Says she doesn’t trust something she uses to sweep up messes to hold her hundreds of feet in the air.” He snickers. “Like she ever sweeps.”

 

Regina smiles. “Then I’d be happy to teach you, Henry.”

 

*

 

They keep it a secret. Henry wants to surprise his mother with his new-found skill. He has dreams of making the Gryffindor Quidditch team in his second year. He has the build of a seeker. Every Saturday when Emma’s with her sixth years, Henry and Regina sneak down to a secluded corner of the school, made impenetrable by a series of complex charms, and she teaches Henry to fly.

 

He’s not kidding when he says he ‘sucks’ at it. Regina borrows one of the better school brooms for him to use but initially the broom won’t even come to his hand when he calls it. “You lack resolve,” Regina says.

 

“Up,” Henry says. “Up!” There’s a sense of pride when he finally grasps the broom. “Now what?”

 

“Mount it,” Regina says. She’s donned trousers for the occasion, having always found robes too cumbersome for flying. She mounts her own broom, a Nimbus 2000 in much need of an update. “Now, push off with your feet. I want you to go ten feet in the air and stay there.”

 

Henry just stares at her. “How?”

 

Regina stares back. “Seriously? What is Hood teaching you?”

 

Henry blushes. “I sprained my ankle in our first flying lesson because I tripped over the brooms. Professor Hood hasn’t let me near them since.”

 

“Ridiculous,” Regina mutters. “Now, you lean forward to go forward and back to go backwards. Tilt the broom handle upwards, sit up and kick off to go straight up. It’s instinctive.”

 

“I have no instincts,” Henry grumbles but he tilts the broom handle up and straightens his spine. For a moment, nothing happens but then he shoots into the air, higher than ten feet. Regina kicks off and catches up with him almost instantly.

 

“Think ‘stop’!” she yells.

 

“I can’t,” Henry replies, rising steadily. She flies closer, close enough that she can grab the handle of his broom. His pipe cleaner legs are dangling helplessly and she can see the panic rising on his face.

 

“I’ve got you, Henry,” she says. “Calm down. Deep breaths. Stop.”

 

Slowly but surely Henry’s breath eases and his broom slows to a halt. Regina, still holding the broom, guides him back down to earth. “I’m not flying again,” he says, obstinate.

 

“Nonsense,” Regina replies. “My father always said you get back on the horse.”

 

“Brooms aren’t horses,” Henry grumbles but once his legs have stopped shaking like they’re under a jelly legs jinx, he stands, holds out his hand over the inert broom and says, “up!”

 

*

 

Emma has rounds and so Regina is alone in her quarters, grading essays, when a face pops up in the fire. “Mills!” It’s Ruby, lips red and smile broad.

 

“Lovely to see you, Ruby,” Regina replies, grabbing her mug of tea and settling down on a low stool by her fire expressly for this purpose. “How is it working for the ministry?”

 

“Training is _amazing_ ,” Ruby says. “I’m the oldest in the programme by about ten years but it’s the dream, Mills.”

 

Regina laughs. One cannot help but love Ruby, who has always called her Mills because she finds boarding school affectations too funny and who clearly hasn’t changed since her time as the Defence against the Dark Arts professor. “I’ve missed you, dear,” she says.

 

“Apparently not as much as you might’ve thought,” Ruby says slyly. “Say, the new professor used to be an Auror. Do you have much to do with her?”

 

“Don’t be coy, dear. It doesn’t suit you.” Regina sips her tea, letting Ruby teeter on breaking point. “Seeing as how you obviously already know, though I cannot fathom how, I am in a relationship with Emma Swan.”

 

Ruby laughs, a deep, train-hurtling-through-a-tunnel chuckle. Flames flicker across her face, creating dancing shadows. “Brilliant! The Saviour and the Evil Queen.”

 

“She hates that moniker,” Regina informs her. “And I’m not over-fond of my own nickname.” There is a knock at her door. “That will be the Saviour,” she says dryly. “Do you wish to meet her?”

 

“Yes please,” Ruby says and there is a glint in her eye that promises mischief. Nonetheless, Regina opens the door and lets Emma in.

 

“Merlin’s left nut, it’s freezing out there,” Emma says, surging forward, looping an arm around Regina’s neck and pulling her forwards for a kiss. The kiss stokes a fire in Regina and she pushes back harder, hands grasping the front of Emma’s robes, lips forceful against Emma’s own.

 

Ruby lets out a whistle from the fireplace and Emma’s face goes beet red. “You didn’t tell me you were talking to someone.”

 

“You hardly gave me a chance, dear,” Regina says. “Emma, this is Ruby, the former Defence teacher. Ruby, Emma.” She gives Ruby a warning look, which Ruby blithely ignores.

 

“So,” Ruby says. “Miss Swan, what are your intentions with my Regina?”

 

Emma widens her eyes and her mouth splits into a wicked grin. “Well, shortly I intend to kiss her again and then I plan to take her to bed where I will do things with her that would make you blush.”

 

“It takes a lot to make me blush,” Ruby says, an eyebrow raised in challenge.

 

“I think that’s quite enough,” Regina says, seeing Emma is ready to get more explicit. “Ruby, you are not my mother or my sister or, in fact, any relation to me so you do not get to have the ‘intentions’ conversation. Emma, if you continue to be crass, you will be sleeping in your own quarters.”

 

Ruby smirks. “I might leave you lovebirds to it,” she says. “Next Hogsmeade weekend, Mills?”

 

“The Three Broomsticks,” Regina agrees. “Two o’clock.” Ruby’s face vanishes from the flames and the next moment Emma is wrapped around her, limpet-like.

 

“I’m really cold,” she says. “Warm me up?”

 

Lying in bed in the afterglow, Regina has a thought. “We should take a trip this summer. You and me and Henry. Perhaps the south of France? Or Puerto Rico? I have cousins there. Somewhere warm anyway.”

 

“Yeah,” Emma says, though she won’t meet Regina’s eye.

 

“You don’t sound convinced.” Regina leans up on one elbow, looking across at Emma, blonde curls sprawled across the pillows.

 

“I just…” Emma sighs. “It doesn’t matter.”

 

“No,” Regina says. “Tell me.”

 

“Do you really think we’ll still be together by the summer?” Emma asks.

 

Regina feels as though she might throw up, her heart pounding in her ears. “Do you not want to be?” She chooses her words carefully.

 

“It’s just, none of my relationships last particularly long…” Emma continues to avoid her gaze and Regina thinks she understands. Emma’s been abandoned so many times, by so many people – including Regina. She can’t get her hopes up.

 

“Emma,” Regina says, kissing the patch of skin just below her ear. “I told you that I saw you in that mirror.” She kisses her neck, feeling her pulse jump below her lips. “You are my deepest desire.” She kisses Emma’s collar bone. “We will be together in the summer.” Her lips descend, brushing against the curve of Emma’s breast, and Emma shivers. “You can hold me to that,” she promises, finger strumming Emma’s pink nipple.

 

“I know somewhere else I’d rather hold you,” Emma chokes out, voice strained. Regina feels like they haven’t finished this conversation, but as she burrows under the covers of the bed she finds that she rather likes the direction events have taken.

 

*

 

“Tell me about your father,” Henry says. She’s teaching him how to properly care for a broomstick.

 

“A good witch or wizard always takes care of their instruments,” she had said, handing him the kit. It’s advice her father gave her long ago; he had been a Quidditch player in his youth, a chaser, and had been a reserve for England. It’s why her mother had been attracted to him, the fame and possibility of glory intoxicating for her. But he’d never gone further than the reserves and had faded into relative obscurity – until Cora found a way to fame again.

 

Regina starts at the question. “My father?” Henry nods. “He was a kind man,” she says. “But weak. You know of my mother, of course?”

 

Henry nods again. “We learned about the Queen of Hearts in History of Magic.”

 

“Of course,” Regina says, sighing. That’s all it is for most people. History. “He taught me to fly. Mother hated it; she said it was unbecoming, that no man would ever marry a girl who spent so much time with a broom between her legs. I suppose she was right.” She laughs.

 

“Don’t worry,” Henry says, his small hand clasping hers. “My ma will marry you.”

 

Regina laughs again. “I don’t think we’re there yet, dear.” Not with Emma who is terrified of planning more than a month into the future, who avoids difficult conversations and emotional intimacy with physical intimacy. “I loved my father more than anyone else in the world.” He had died at her hands, to prove her loyalty to Cora. He would have died regardless, she told herself. Cora had lost interest in him, or the respectability he granted her. At least she had made it a painless death, just a flash of green light and then it was over. For him at least. She decides Henry doesn’t need to know that.

 

Henry’s hand is still locked with hers. “He started Hogwarts at eleven with very little English,” she says. “But he was Hufflepuff’s star chaser, brought them to victory for the first time in a century.”

 

“He must have been strong in some ways,” Henry says, returning to the broom, clipping wayward bristles. “Hogwarts is hard enough when you speak English fluently.”

 

“Yes, perhaps,” she says. “Perhaps he used up all his strength getting through seven years at a British boarding school. He changed his name, you know, in his third year at Hogwarts. My family name was Millan.”

 

“Professor Millan,” Henry says, trying the words out. “I like it.”

 

“Maybe one day I’ll reclaim it,” she says, shrugging. “Now, we should return to the castle. Place your broom carefully back in the cupboard and we will resume lessons next Saturday.”

 

*

 

They’re sitting up together in bed on Sunday morning, a rare moment in time where Regina has nothing that immediately needs doing and nor does Emma. Emma has stolen the sports section of the paper, even though she knows Regina desperately wants to know the results for last night’s Scotland and England Quidditch match, so Regina reads the international news and plots her revenge. Decaffeinated coffee, perhaps? Canary Cream?

 

“You’re deliberately reading slowly,” she says, and Emma grins guiltily. “Evil.”

 

“Not me,” Emma says. “I’m the Saviour. I rid the world of evil.”

 

“How interesting that you are quite happy with the nickname when it suits your purposes,” Regina says, stealthily grabbing her wand from her bedside table. “ _Accio_ sport’s section.”

 

The newspaper flies from Emma’s hands. “Dirty tactics!” she cries when Regina smugly folds the section back to the front and begins reading. “Fine. Scotland. Lost.”

 

Regina stares at her in horror. “Did you just spoil something I have been waiting to find out about since last night?” Her eyes narrow. “I will destroy your happiness if it’s the last thing I do.”

 

“You have no idea what I’m capable of, sister,” Emma says, sticking her tongue between her teeth in a way that is positively sinful. Soon Regina has quite forgotten the sports pages, lost in the sensation of Emma’s tongue and teeth against her skin.

 

“Where did Henry’s name come from?” she asks when they are dressing (because she supposes they have to leave her quarters sometime). She has been curious since he asked her about her father.

 

Emma falls over, attempting to pull on too-tight jeans, and Regina laughs, loudly and unfettered. “I can’t remember,” she stutters.

 

“Liar,” Regina says, bumping Emma with her shoulder.

 

“Don’t laugh,” Emma says. “He’s named after your dad.” Her words come out in a mumbled rush, so much so that Regina doesn’t quite understand for a moment. Then she simply stares at Emma. “I’m sorry,” Emma adds. “I didn’t mean to be creepy. You talked about your dad when you were helping me, you know, that day in your classroom when you were trying to keep me conscious and I wanted to do something to honour you for saving me and the baby and I know his real name was Enrique but I didn’t want to be appropriative…” But she is cut off when Regina surges forward, half dressed, and kisses her.

 

Their foreheads touch. “I…” the words stick in her throat but she hopes Emma understands. _I love you._

 

*

 

Of course, the perfection can’t last. Henry’s growing confidence with flying makes him reckless and her careless and when he flies at the Whomping Willow, he gets a direct hit to the head. He falls from the broom and Regina very nearly doesn’t catch him in time. “ _Wingardium Leviosa_ ,” she screams, wand pointed at the rapidly falling body and he stops mere inches from the ground. He is unconscious and there’s blood streaming from an abrasion on his head. She lifts him, performing a charm to make him light, pressing her robes against the wound and rushing to hospital wing. She whispers to him all the way. “Wake up, Henry darling. Wake up.”

 

Madame Ratchet takes him off her hands, grimacing. “What happened, Regina?”

 

“He took a hit from the Whomping Willow,” she says. There’s blood on her shaking hands and she paces the hospital wing while Ratchet gets to work on Henry. She just barely has the presence of mind to send her Patronus – a stallion – to Emma.

 

“Sit down,” the nurse says. “You’ll drive me mad. There’s chocolate in my desk drawer for shock.” Regina sits but does not reach for the chocolate, instead staring at the blood staining her hands. All my fault, she thinks. All my fault. Her lip is raw and bleeding and she digs the nails of one hand into her arm, leaving deep crescents in the skin.

 

Emma whirls into the hospital wing, face white and terrified. “He’s all right,” Ratchet says. “I’ve stopped the bleeding and he’s sleeping peacefully.”

 

Emma takes a deep, shaky breath, staring at her son, lying small and pale in the hospital bed. Then she sees Regina and two red spots appear in her cheeks. “What the hell happened?”

 

“Flying accident,” Regina says, voice trembling. “I was teaching him. He flew into the path of the Whomping Willow.”

 

Emma looks like she might vomit, her cheeks bulging and throat moving as she gags. “He’s my son!” she yells. “How _dare_ you teach him something so dangerous without my permission?”

 

“He wanted to surprise you,” Regina snaps. “And in case it escaped your notice, flying is a school subject. I was helping him with his homework.”

 

Emma’s anger bubbles over. “If you cared for him at all, you would never have been so arrogant as to assume that your teaching must be better than the approved flying course.”

 

“How dare you say I don’t care?” Regina said, her own temper blazing like _Fiendfyre_ , impossible to contain or control. “In case you’ve forgotten, I was the first person to ever care about your damn child.”

 

Emma’s voice is low and dangerous when she speaks next. “Get. Out.”

 

Regina leaves, finding herself at the showers where she gets in fully dressed, curls up on the ground under the hot spray and sobs.

 

*

 

Regina spends the next week on autopilot. Her seventh years whisper about how she and Professor Swan must have fought and speculate about the cause of the argument. She finds she doesn’t have the energy to tell them off for gossiping, not when they’re looking at her with such pity she thinks she might cry. Henry is back in her first year Transfiguration class on Thursday, a bandage on the side of his head but otherwise cheerful as always.

 

“I’m fine,” he says impatiently, when she calls him up to her desk on the pretence of catching him up on the past lesson. “You and Ma need to make up though.”

 

“We have just started learning to conjure bluebell flames. The spell is _Lacarum Inflamarae_ ,” she says, hoping he does not hear the tremor in her voice. “It’s on page 107 of your text book.”

 

“Can we go flying next Saturday?” At her surprised look, he says, “gotta get back on that horse.”

 

“Ask your mother,” she says, wand in her hand shaking. Henry sighs but returns to his desk without fuss, casting the spell perfectly first time round and Regina feels an unjustified surge of pride because it’s not like Henry is _her_ son.

 

On Saturday, when Emma is supposed to meet with her fan club, Regina settles down to mark papers. But there is a knock at the door. It is Emma who has turned up at Regina’s door this time, her hangdog expression and bitten nails telling Regina everything she needs to know. Emma is desperately sorry.

 

“We can’t go on like this,” Regina says because she’s sorry too. She had promised herself never to be so vicious again, and yet at the first provocation her anger came out.

 

“I agree.” Emma twists her hands in front of her. “I’m not good at relationships. I run and when I can’t run I lash out. I was so scared.”

 

“I was just so pleased to be in Henry’s life,” Regina admits. “I don’t know how to do this.”

 

And then Emma does something unthinkable. She gets down on one knee.

 

“Miss Swan, get up,” Regina gasps, horrified.

 

“Regina Mills,” Emma says. “I don’t want to run anymore. Will you marry me?”

 

Regina stares at her a moment. “No, Emma darling,” she says, gently. “I won’t.”

 

For a moment Emma is frozen and then she starts to laugh so hard tears stream down her cheeks. She falls from her pose, lying on her back and laughing. “Oh thank God,” she exclaims. “What was I thinking?”

 

“I think it’s quite clear, darling,” Regina says, “that you weren’t.”

 

Emma grins up at her, before grabbing her ankle and pulling her to the ground, Regina landing with a thud across Emma’s stomach. “Rude,” she murmurs. “I proposed and you cruelly rejected me.”

 

“Next time you propose I will say yes,” Regina promises, crawling up Emma’s body so she is nestled in the crook of her arm. “I have no intention of letting you go, Emma Swan.”

 

Emma wraps her arm around Regina and it’s so warm. “Good,” she says. “I like us.”

 

Henry, knocking on the door an hour later and then entering without waiting, finds them still curled together on the floor of Regina’s sitting room and lets out a noise of abject disgust. “You’re totally gross,” he says. Emma looks over at Regina, eyes sparkling, and they each grab an ankle and pull him down with them.

**Author's Note:**

> The third part in 'Going Back to Hogwarts', partly as a thank you for those who voted for 'Spinning Matchsticks into Needles' it in the sqfanawards and partly just because I wanted to.  
> Also, this is betraying just how little of a life I've had this weekend. Feedback would be marvelous as this is the part in the trilogy I feel the least certain about.
> 
> I can't promise a next part - but if I get an idea for one, I guess this is sufficiently open-ended...


End file.
